The Soft Goodbye
by Rockstar with a Vendetta
Summary: One-Shot. Keladry lays dying, surrounded by the men who adore her, but death is a journey one must travel alone.


**This absolutely killed me - Kel is my favorite character, and I almost couldn't do it.**

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The corridors echoed with his footsteps, his legs pumping frantically. _Please_, Owen thought desperately, gasping for breath as he took the stairs two at a time, _please don't let me be too late_.

The infirmary door was ajar when he arrived, gulping in air, but his heart sank as he saw who was guarding the door—Lerant, and if his stiff-legged stance was any indication, he had been waiting for him and was itching for a fight.

"_You_," he practically spit, his lips pulled back in a snarl. "Don't even think about it."

Owen would not be put off, not this time. "I'm not here to start anything," he said in a low voice. "I just want to see her. To—to say—"

"To say what?" Lerant snapped. "To say _goodbye_? To say you love her, and oh, how sad it is that you never ended up together? To say _why did you marry into a house like Eldorne, Kel, when Jesslaw is still in good graces_—"

His voice choked in his throat, and all he could do was make a pitiful keening noise. Suddenly, Raoul slipped out of the infirmary and gently wrapped a large arm around his shoulders. Lerant collapsed against him, and Owen would never forget the scene that unfolded for as long as he lived—Lerant weeping, great sobs of utter anguish, allowing himself this weakness in face of his wife's inevitable death.

"Go in and see her," Raoul said quietly. "But only for a minute."

Owen tried to convey his gratitude in his expression, and quietly went into the infirmary room.

It was a sight that made Owen's heart constrict painfully. Keladry lay in the infirmary bed, so still that only the slow, shallow breaths she took convinced him she was alive. She was ghastly gray, and he knew that under the cotton sheets there was a bandage barely keeping her blood and intestines in her belly. No amount of healing could fix her now, and it was only a matter of keeping her body comfortable.

A noise behind him made Owen turn; it was Neal, sitting in a chair with his long fingers entwined in his hair, his head bowed, his shoulders shaking. The duke of Queenscove, Kel's committed healer, was gently urging his son up. The look on Neal's face, hopeless and empty, was testament to his staunch love for his best friend of thirty years.

They left, and Owen gingerly sat on the edge. He took her cold hand in his and whispered, "Kel."

Her lashes fluttered.

"Kel," he said again. "It's Owen. Wake up."

She opened her eyes, and he hated the foggy look in them. "Owen?"

"Yeah," he said. He brushed her bangs from her sweaty face. "It's me."

She was feverish, and she rolled her head from side to side as though she couldn't control it. "Owen?"

This wasn't Kel, this broken figure in dying in this bed. This was a gaunt, pathetic replica of who she was—because who she was was brave and strong and fearless, and this was not.

"Yeah," he repeated through his tears, "it's me, Kel. It's me, love. Gods, please don't die—Goddess, merciful Mother, please keep her here—"

"The children," she rasped, speaking to an invisible figure standing beside him. "I can hear them crying. Raoul has nightmares...please, I need to go to him."

"No, Kel," Owen sobbed, pulling her hand to his lips. "Raoul's grown and married, you know this. He hasn't had nightmares since he was five."

"I'm alone," she whispered. He was horrified to see tears begin to spill from her eyes. "Where are you?"

"I'm right here," he said. "I'm right—"

"Where are you, Lerant?" she continued, as though she hadn't heard him. "Why did you leave me?"

He fell silent then, and stared hopelessly at her. She couldn't hear him through her dying illusions, and she never would know he was there. He leaned down and gently kissed her chapped lips, and then stood up.

"Goodbye, Kel," he choked, and fled.

Keladry of Eldorne died a couple hours later, with her devoted husband begging her to stay and the man who had loved her since he was a clumsy page curled up in his bed, weeping for what could have been and what would never be.

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**Please review!**


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